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WCM-Q student research mentorship continues despite pandemic

Rozaleen Aleyadeh, left, Dr. Christopher Triggle and Omna Sharma.
Rozaleen Aleyadeh, left, Dr. Christopher Triggle and Omna Sharma.

Biomedical research experience is fundamental to the curriculum at Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar (WCM-Q) and even during lockdown, students have continued this work and continued to publish high-quality research data.

During a typical year, trainee doctors at WCM-Q would often be flying to Weill Cornell Medicine in New York for the summer to pursue their study interests there. But with borders closed, laboratories shut and many students returning to their home countries, the leadership at WCM-Q had to act swiftly to ensure that research opportunities were still available. So, faculty based at the college were invited to propose research projects and mentor students remotely, allowing them to gain the necessary research experience but also make valuable contributions to scientific knowledge.

Dr. Thurayya Arayssi.

For the faculty members this was a step into the unknown; mentoring would normally be done face-to-face where reports and studies could be examined as a group, allowing several different ideas to be shared at the same time. Online mentoring meant this would have to change to one-on-one interviews using video-conferencing technology, making the sharing of written reports and diagrams more difficult. In addition, students were often spread across different time zones.

Dr. Christopher Triggle, professor of pharmacology at WCM-Q, said: “Meetings between ourselves and the students would normally be done in-house and often all at the same time so that ideas, criticisms and ways forward could be discussed among everyone, but we had one student in Australia, one in Korea and three in Qatar. So, we had Zoom meetings once a day, spending about an hour with each student and it probably worked out as well as if we were all sitting in the same room.

“Prior organisation was key to ensuring each meeting was productive but because we have been using this online conferencing technology for several months, it all went extremely smoothly and actually allowed for greater flexibility.”

Dr. Salman Al-Jerdi, assistant professor of neurology at WCM-Q, also acted as a mentor, guiding Rozaleen Aleyadeh through the research project ‘Management of Cognitive Impairment after Stroke’, which was also written with Dr. Yahia Imam, consultant in internal medicine and neurology at Hamad Medical Corporation.

Dr. Al-Jerdi’s research and mentorship began before the COVID-19 pandemic but file-sharing software and conferencing apps that have become familiar to WCM-Q faculty allowed it to continue through lockdown, providing him and Dr. Imam with the tools to guide Rozaleen through the literature review.

Dr. Salman Al-Jerdi.

He said: “We talked about the content of the topic, we talked about cognitive impairment, how it happens and what we can do about it. Much of it involved Rozaleen looking things up, discussing the findings with me and checking the information was up to date. The second part was how to write the review itself, both from a general perspective and the specific requirements that individual journals demand.”

He added: “Her interest in the topic made it easy to discuss the paper and she was easy to mentor. It was very rewarding as she has used this to start another research project.”

The mentorships have proved to be particularly successful academically as well.

Both Omna Sharma, who was mentored by Dr. Triggle, and Rozaleen had their papers accepted in peer reviewed medical journals. For Omna, her manuscript ‘A Review of the Progress and Challenges of Developing a Vaccine for COVID-19’ was published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, while Rozaleen’s can be found in Current Treatment Options in Neurology.

Omna said it had been a very positive experience.

She said: “Dr. Triggle was very organised and very clear with what I had to do and how I should approach the task.

“Because the student is supposed to be at the centre of the project, I did the bulk of the writing and the figures and data and my mentors helped me by finding some of the articles and research papers and by providing guidance and feedback. But the acceptance of the publication - my first - would not have been possible without the support of Dr. Triggle, Dr. Sultan and Dr. Ding as they really helped guide me in multiple ways.”

For Rozaleen, too, who is a member of the Class of 2021, the mentorship was a rewarding experience, allowing her to be actively involved in the literature review, investigating pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments for cognitive impairment, writing the introduction to the paper and also preparing figures and data – much of it online.

“She said: “We regularly exchanged emails and we used an online bibliography and library, so we were able to follow the thought processes of each other. It felt great to be published and I was really thankful to Dr. Al-Jerdi and Dr. Imam.”

Dr. Thurayya Arayssi, senior associate dean for medical education and continuing professional development at WCM-Q, thanked all the faculty who had made such a valuable contribution to the research mentorship program.

Dr. Arayssi said: “Biomedical research is vital to the advancement of medicine and healthcare and at WCM-Q we strongly encourage students to take an active participation in research so that they become the physician-scientists of the future. Doctors should always be intellectually curious, and by providing them with the tools to conduct their own research, we can help contribute to the discovery of new medical therapies and innovations.

“Obviously research mentorships like these would usually be conducted face-to-face but faculty at WCM-Q have always utilized the latest technology and over the last few months they have become particularly proficient in using new and innovative virtual tools to get the job done.

“I would like to once again thank all of our faculty, and those from affiliated institutions, who shared their own knowledge and time so generously with WCM-Q students, and who provided mentorship and guidance throughout this particularly difficult year.”